The Drawing of the Dark

As Aurelianus had predicted, the Turkish troops were

shifting around to face the eastern wall with its gap like a missing tooth in a stony jaw. Sentries crouched to lay their ears against the pavement, and many claimed to hear the digging of miners at several points north of the collapsed section of wall. There was sporadic trading of booming cannon-fire, but, aside from a particularly heavy burst of Turkish firing by the south wall at about noon, the cannonade was little more than a desultorily observed formality.

Battle was anticipated, and the sellers of horoscopes and luck pieces did a good business among soldiers and citizens alike. Prostitutes and liquid vendors clustered around the makeshift landsknecht barracks, taking their own share of the weirdly inverted economy common to all long-besieged cities. The solace of Faith was free, but nothing else was - and food was much harder to buy than luck, sex, or a drink.

Duffy opened his eyes and crossed without a jolt from unremembered dreams into wakefulness. St Stephen's was tolling two, and the gray light that slanted in under the awning waxed and waned as the tattered clouds moved across the sun. He stood up and put on his boots, hauberk, doublet and sword, pushed the curtain aside and stepped out into the street. A wine vendor was wheeling his cart past, and the Irishman called for a cup. The man's young son trotted over with it and asked an exorbitant price, which Duffy paid after bestowing his fiercest frown on the unconcerned lad. His company wasn't due to muster until three o'clock, so he took the wine - which proved to be sour - over to a corner where the tumbled wall of a warehouse formed a rough bench.

He leaned back and closed his eyes, and ran one open palm over a gritty stone surface. He was mildly surprised to discover that he felt now none of last night's stark, guilty horror - just a tired sadness about the losses of a

lot of things, of which Epiphany was admittedly the most poignant. There was a distance to it, though - it was the sort of melancholy that can be taken down from the shelf and bitterly savored during a leisure hour, and not any longer the plain pain that is no more escapable than a toothache. He suspected that this not unpleasant abstraction was the numbing effect of emotional shock, and would, like the quick, natural anesthesia of a serious injury, wear off before long. It did not occur to him that it might be resignation to the idea of his own death.

Opening his eyes and straightening up, he was not surprised to see Aurelianus in the area again, fussily picking his way toward him over and around the scattered chunks of masonry. As he stepped closer Duffy noticed a new bandage tied around his forehead and under his ears that had blotted red over his cheek.

Duffy smiled, a little surprised to discover that he could find no anger toward the ancient sorcerer. 'What ho, wizard?' Duffy boomed politely when Aurelianus was in earshot. 'Did Von Salm take a poke at you with his rapier? You were probably explaining to him how things are not what they seem, am I right?'

'I didn't see von Salm,' Aurelianus said, trying to scratch his forehead under the bandage. 'They wouldn't let me up in the cathedral spire to speak with him.' He shook his head in angry exasperation. 'Damn it - if this impasse between Ibrahim and me didn't render the whole magical field so inert, he'd be no more necessary than a child with a sling-shot.'

'Well, you can still do' low-power magics, right? Couldn't you have got by those guards?'

Aurelianus sighed deeply and sat down. 'Oh, certainly. I could - with a mere gesture! - have given them all... some damn thing.. .the bowel-quakes, say, and made it impossible for them to stay at their posts. But it's so undignified And I know von Salm wouldn't listen anyway. Yes, the small-time country type spells still work as well as ever, but there's not any battlehandy magic in them - just homey lore on how to harvest your wheat, milk your cows and brew your beer, or how to foil a disliked neighbor's attempts to do those things. Hell. I hope Ibrahim is as discouraged as I am.' He looked up cautiously. 'You missed Mrs Hallstadt's wake.'

Again the Irishman felt a wash of the almost mellow regret, as if of events that happened centuries ago. 'Oh? When?'

Early this morning they.. .found the bodies. When the news reached the Zimmermann a spontaneous wake developed, and Werner wasn't due back until nightfall - he and Kretchmer are off somewhere, I don't know where - so the affair proceeded unhindered for several hours.'

'Ah.' Duffy sipped his inferior wine thoughtfully. 'So what are you going to do about our two poets?'

'I've got a half-dozen armed men waiting for them, led by my man Jock - Giacomo Gritti, remember? - and they'll capture them and bind them to await my interrogation.'

Duffy nodded. 'I see.' He emptied his cup and shuddered. 'Incidentally, what has made the bandage necessary? Did you cut yourself shaving?'

'Oh - no, I was on the wall watching Mothertongue's charge.'

Duffy raised an eyebrow. 'Mothertongue's charge?'

'Didn't you hear about it?'

'I've been asleep,' Duffy explained.

'Huh. I would have thought all the cannon-fire would have awakened you.' The wizard shrugged sadly. 'The poor idiot. He got a full suit of old plate armor from the stores somewhere, made somebody lock him up in it, and then rode his horse through an unguarded ferrier's door in the outer wall, right beside the Wiener-Bach - that little - stream that runs along the eastern side of the wall.'

'I think I know the door you mean,' Duffy said. 'I didn't know it had been left unguarded, though. So poor old Mothertongue charged off to save the day, eh?'

'That's right. All by himself, too, since Bugge and the northmen have finally convinced him that they don't want to be knights of the round table. He even carried a makeshift lance and banner, and recited a lot of poetry or something outside the wall before he galloped off. All the men on the battlements were cheering him on and making bets on how far he'd get.'

'How far did he get?'

'Not far. A hundred yards or so, I guess. He must have startled the Turk gunners - this high-noon charge by one rusty old knight. They soon got over their surprise, though, and touched off several guns. It was mostly canister and grapeshot for cutting down troops, but they even let go with a nine-pounder or two. That's how I cut my cheek - a few bits of flying metal or stone came whistling around the parapet.'

'And they got him...?'

'Mothertongue? Certainly. Blew him and his horse to bits. It served one purpose, at least - we sealed up that door and included it in the sentry's rounds.'

'Damned odd,' said Duffy. 'I wonder what pushed him over the edge.'

The hollow cracking of four cannons interrupted Aurelianus' reply. Duffy looked up at the battlements. 'Sounds like the twelve-pounders,' he observed. 'I guess Bluto figures the Janissaries have no business taking afternoon naps...

Two more cannon detonations shook the pavement, and then he heard the cracking of the sharpshooters' rifled guns. He was on his feet immediately. 'It must be a charge,' he snapped, and was running toward the square by the gap even as the cacophanous alarum bells began clanging across the city from the St Stephen's tower.